‘Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away’ in 3-D

Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away

For me, Cirque du Soleil will always be associated with the movie “Knocked Up,” in which the characters played by Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd take in a performance of “Mystère” under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms. If such a trip is not to your taste, or if a trip to Las Vegas is not on your calendar, you might opt for the relatively inexpensive, mildly mind-blowing “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away,” a new 3-D movie directed by Andrew Adamson.

Mr. Adamson, whose previous credits include the first two “Shrek” and the first two “Chronicles of Narnia” movies, threads together a greatest-hits anthology of sequences from seven Cirque du Soleil productions. A big-eyed young woman (Erica Linz) catches the eye of an aerialist (Igor Zaripov) and, after he falls into a sand pit, pursues him through a series of enchanted, sometimes sinister landscapes.

She encounters an industrial hamster-wheel dungeon; a contortionist in what looks like a large cocktail; assorted mimes, clowns, acrobats and sea creatures; and a handful of Beatles songs. All of it is stamped with the easy-to-recognize, hard-to-describe Soleil blend of athletic bravura, surreal wit and abstract, family-friendly eroticism.

While the bodies of the performers do amazing things, the hectic editing and frequent use of slow motion distract from their physical artistry rather than enhance it. The 3-D, on the other hand, gives some sense of the scale of a Cirque du Soleil performance, and even if the film is no substitute for the real thing, it is at least an effective advertisement.